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FINANCIAL TIMES
Why Donald Trump is great news for Xi Jinping
The US president has disarmed America in the battle of ideas
Gideon Rachman
Donald Trump has been in office long enough for certain patterns to
emerge in his behaviour. The US president likes to create a crisis, let
it run a while and then announce that he has solved it. He will frighten
friend and foe alike with dire threats, before striking an agreement
that he self-certifies as “tremendous”. In reality, the new deal will
often be superficial and the underlying issues will remain largely
unaddressed. This
is the model that the Trump administration has followed with North
Korea, as well as with Mexico and Canada. And it is the model that is
pretty clearly going to emerge in Mr Trump’s “trade war” with China. In a
few weeks time, the US president will declare a great victory. His loyal
aides will play along. But the underlying reality will be that not much
has actually changed in the economic relationship between the US and
China — in the same way that not much changed in the trade relationship
between the US, Canada and Mexico after Mr Trump’s team renegotiated the
North American Free Trade Agreement. Just
as North Korea has not actually scrapped its nuclear weapons, so China
will not actually scrap its system of state subsidies for industry, the
most fundamental way in which Beijing disadvantages foreign competitors.
Instead, the Chinese are likely to buy off Mr Trump with pledges to
purchase lots more American goods. They will also open up more sectors
of their economy to US investment and tighten laws on intellectual
property. This will probably not affect America’s trade deficit with
China. And it will certainly not impair China’s drive for dominance in
the technologies of the future. But
calling off the trade war will not be the only gift from Mr Trump to
Chinese president Xi Jinping. For Mr Trump has already disarmed America
in an even more important battle — the battle of ideas. That
matters because America’s most potent weapon in its emerging contest for
supremacy with China is not its economy, nor its aircraft carriers, but
its ideas. The notion that abstract principles like “freedom” and
“democracy” are powerful American assets is sometimes dismissed as
liberal wishful-thinking. But Chinese actions suggest otherwise. The
government of Mr Xi does its utmost to suppress the circulation of
liberal and western ideas, censoring the internet and cracking down on
dissidents, students and human rights lawyers. The
fact that previous US presidents spoke up for human rights was more than
an irritant to the Chinese one-party state — it was a threat. There was
no better symbol of this than the “Goddess of Democracy”, built by
pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which bore an
uncanny resemblance to America’s Statue of Liberty. The
Tiananmen uprising was bloodily repressed and the “Goddess” was torn
down. But Chinese liberals have continued to look to America for
inspiration and support. Human rights were only one item on the US
agenda when dealing with China. But they were a crucial part of what
America stood for in the world.
Sadly, that has now changed. As a candidate, Mr Trump gave a very
ambiguous reply when asked about the Tiananmen massacre of 1989,
stating: “they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down
with strength.” As president, he has made it clear that he is an admirer
of authoritarian strongmen around the world. The
US state department continues to issue an annual report on human rights
worldwide, which has strong things to say about China. But the message
coming from the Oval Office is rather different. On various occasions,
Mr Trump has praised Mr Xi as “a great leader” and a “very good man”. This
matters because Mr Xi is actually the most authoritarian leader of China
since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Mr Trump’s over-the-top praise
for him risks giving the American stamp of approval for repression in
China. When Mr Xi abolished presidential term limits, making it possible
for him to rule for life, Mr Trump’s response was to joke that America
should consider that model of government. But
repression in Mr Xi’s China is no laughing matter. Controls on the
media, the internet and universities have all been tightened
significantly since he came to power in 2012. And there has been an
unprecedented crackdown in the province of Xinjiang, with up to 1m
Uighurs confined to “re-education camps”.
Compared to China, America still provides an inspiring example of a free
society in action. But the fact that the US president regularly trashes
the “fake news” media, and that his administration has separated
thousands of illegal migrants from their children at the US border,
blurs what should be a bright line between the practices of a democracy
and those of an authoritarian state. The
resolution to the trade dispute may do further damage. Mr Trump shows
every sign of wanting to move on from his battle with China, and to
declare a new trade war on the EU and Japan. In doing so, the president
will drive a wedge through the middle of the western alliance, making it
all but impossible to take a co-ordinated approach to China. If
that happens, Mr Trump will look less like China’s toughest adversary
and more like the answer to Mr Xi’s prayers. |